Contributed by: evilscientist
It would appear that despite passing the so-called accountability act, Harper and his government have been appointing people to posts quickly as if to avoid the oversight the act will provide when it comes into force. It's just a little hypocritical to say that the appointment process needs to be transparent, enact legislation to do that and then avoid the effect of the legislation by rushing through appointments before the legislation takes effect.Now I can here the Tory apologists now, "it's not illegal yet" and "those jobs still need to be filled". Both of these statements are true, but if the Harper government were truly principled, it would use the new rules now and set the example, not wait until the law comes into effect. You just can't roll into office claiming to clean up government then do everything the past government did and still have any credibility with the voter that you actually are cleaning up government. Apparently someone needs to take Harper and his cronies aside and explain the political term "optics" to them.
Of course Harper could have avoided all this and started using the new rules now. Nothing would stop him from doing that. He won't though, since his one attempt to do that was to appoint a big supporter to an appointment commission and when he decided to let Parliament vet his decision, was upset that in a minority situation, the majority of parliamentarians decided that his choice was too much of a patronage appointment. This has probably made Harper a little gun shy and unlikely to, as they would say, do the right thing and act as if the new anti-corruption rules were in effect now.
Harper could also be allowing this to happen simply because they don't think they can win the next election and they need to stuff the civil service full of Tories before the Liberals take over again. They hope the Accountability Act will prevent the next government from tossing out the Tory patronage appointments. This is a possible scenario, though it smacks of forward thinking, something the Harper Tories aren't too good at.
So as the old saying goes, never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. It is likely Harper won't operate by the new rules yet simply because he can't control Parliament and get his way with appointments. Which leaves him to explain where the accountability is.
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Evilness
http://www.evilscientist.ca/article.php?story=20070112160634854